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02/01/06

Terry Mart: Counting papers

Citation numbers and the Impact Factor of journals are often used to evaluate the quality and the importance of research. Both quantities have some shortcomings, and people using these indicators should know when and when not to use them.

02/01/06

Challenges

Particle physics has been confronted with serious challenges in recent years, especially for the operation of colliders. Yet 2006 promises to be a great year for research in particle physics as well as photon science, and many exciting projects are underway.

01/01/06

Career advice

In response to the letter headed "Careers in particle physics," by Tomo Lazovich (symmetry, October 2005). In the recent book of the letters of Richard P. Feynman, there are many letters asking him for advice such as Mr. Lazovich seeks on pursuing a career in physics.

01/01/06

Particle physics goes to school

Students around the world are familiar with the periodic table of elements, a chart that outlines how protons, neutrons, and electrons form more than 100 different types of atoms.

01/01/06

PANIC trouble

When physicists organized the first Particles and Nuclei International Conference in 1963, nobody thought that the acronym PANIC could cause trouble in getting the word out about the meeting. That was before the now-common use of email.

01/01/06

Slashdotted

When the 10th issue of symmetry magazine came out on October 12, the magazine's Web server crashed unexpectedly. Looking at the Web traffic statistics, the reason became obvious: symmetry had been "slashdotted."

01/01/06

Neutrinos: a gateway to new physics

Nature provides three kinds of neutrinos. In the last ten years, physicists have gathered increasingly strong evidence for neutrino oscillations, the transformation of one kind of neutrino into another one.

01/01/06

Top turns 10, in a manner of speaking

After the discovery of a new elementary particle 10 years ago by Fermilab's CDF and DZero detector collaborations, a group from DZero threw a party. Between bottles of bubbly celebrating the top quark's detection, a contest of brains was in full-swing.

01/01/06

A dry run for money

Graduate students acclimate to sparse levels of comfort, but present and former Fermilab doctoral students Matt Leslie (Oxford University, CDF), James Monk (Manchester University, DZero), and Simon Waschke (Glasgow University, formerly CDF) are reaching for extremes: Taking a 1987 Renault purchas

01/01/06

International Year of Physics

The United Nations declared 2005 as the International Year of Physics (IYP). Welcome as it is within the physics community, and though a fitting gesture to celebrate the centennial of Einstein’s annus mirabilis, what has the year achieved?

01/01/06

Chelsea Wald: Blogging a year in particle physics

In December 2004, the particle physics community started a bold and somewhat unusual initiative. Called Quantum Diaries, it was to be a Web site weaving together the online diaries of dozens of physicists from around the world for the World Year of Physics.

01/01/06

NOvA: A neutrino appearance expirement

Deep in the woods of Minnesota, close to the Canadian border, particle physicists hope to construct the next neutrino experiment on a secluded piece of land, fit for studying a lightweight particle that was, itself, once ignored.

01/01/06

Ecoscience

Stepping onto the site of a physics laboratory, you might expect to see enormous accelerators, ultra-powerful supercomputers, or scientists in lab coats racing between experiments. At one lab, however, what you will actually see are goats.

01/01/06

The search for extra dimensions

Although we now think of the universe as three bulky, nearly-flat dimensions, we might soon discover that the fabric of space-time consists of many more dimensions than we ever dreamed.

01/01/06

Graduate school gourmet

If you are working on a PhD, chances are you're too busy feeding your brain to plan your next meal. Particle physicists share how they managed when they needed cheap or fast meals during grad school.